


Multiple Effects of Time Travel

by orphan_account



Category: Layton Kyouju Series | Professor Layton Series
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Gen, Mental Instability, POV First Person, Time Travel, Unrequited Love, Unrequited Lust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-21
Updated: 2012-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-15 07:43:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/847027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years after that tragic accident, Dimitri Allen is still remembering, and still working. But when the woman he loved and lost is suddenly placed before him again, both of them struggle with the reality that things have changed...or that they haven't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in spring 2012...It was my first serious Professor Layton fic. Looking back on it, I really don't think it's that bad! Dimitri's POV.

The research facility was rebuilt soon after it was destroyed. Difficult as it was, I eventually returned to work there, though the pain on some days was near unbearable. It didn’t get any better after I found Clive—or rather, Clive found me. Having something to work towards is no cheer at all when it reminds you every day of the one time you were too late.

I had to enjoy my days of sunshine while they lasted; it wasn’t long until I’d be moving underground. Clive and I had recently discussed the plans, ones of his design, and we were both quite enthused to be relocating Bill Hawks to the underground “London” in such a fitting way. I hoped it would give him the scare of his life. He deserved far worse.

I got so tired keeping up with all of this strangeness and secrecy. I was growing old before my time. But it would be worth it, the loss of my youth and good cheer and the pleasure of natural sunlight, if the time machine worked. If it worked, if that miracle could ever come to pass, I could undo everything that had gone wrong, everything would at last be as it should. Bill would be brought to heel, perhaps even exposed before he could go through with any of his plans. My good name would be restored, I would even be acclaimed. And Claire would be alive again, or rather, she would have never died, and her blood would never have been on my hands. What colossal irony it was, that I had cut off the life of the only woman I had ever loved. If I could right that…if I could only see her again…That was what I worked for. Her voice in my ears was fading, I could no longer remember the fine details of her face and the way her hair fell down onto her shoulders. I couldn’t have her erased all the way. If I didn’t remember her, then surely no one would, and she deserved to be remembered forever.

I was certain our designs would have worked, if they had only been given more time. Clive Dove believed me, and he was paying me well to finish what had been started. I could do it without Bill. I had the resources now, and I had more motivation than I could have ever imagined in the days when Bill had been my friend and Claire had been by my side.

So I worked, and waited, and the number of weeks I had left in the sun grew fewer and fewer.

\--

There was no way I could have expected Claire to ever return. I had never entertained the fantasy that the time machine had worked and saved her somehow; I had held her limp body in my arms and prayed to a God I had long neglected that she would be alright, though I knew it was far too late for hope.  Every year since, I’d marked the anniversary of her death with memories of when I had been a happier man and bitter vows to ruin Bill. I’d bring him down with me.

When the tenth anniversary came, I woke up alone, at an early hour, and wondered how I had kept going this long. Outside the walls of my apartment, London’s people went on as usual, not acknowledging, probably not even aware that anything had happened that day.

 Though, the weather that day did have a certain cast to it, a dirty, smoky kind of overcast that hung in the air as if the incident had occurred only recently. Clive noticed it and so did I.

“Celebrating?” he asked sarcastically, calling me at work as he was prone to; I didn’t think he had a job. I didn’t know much about him really at all.

“Certainly remembering. I think I may go on a walk today…I need time to myself…”  I simply didn’t want to speak to him today. Why didn’t he go do something important? Wasn’t he supposed to be busy?

“Yes, I’m remembering as well. The screams of the doomed trapped inside that burning building are still fresh in my ears…” he spit. Clive would talk this way. I wondered if he secretly blamed me for the incident. I wouldn’t put it past him.

“In fact, I believe I’ll have that walk right now. Is there anything I should be doing?”

“Just keep on with the usual. I’m practicing my acting.” I could practically hear the smirk in his voice; oh, I wished I could tell that mad little prat to stop talking.

“Yes, good luck with that. Goodbye then.” I hung up and dropped the phone as if it was superheated—after him, I needed fresh air more than ever. He was barely more than a naïve secondary schooler, but his perpetual arrogance unnerved me a little. I wasn’t certain how dangerous he really was.

I stepped out a back door that was unofficially reserved for smokers, and within a few steps I had lost myself in thought. I do have a knack for bringing up the feelings I least need to have, and I’m quite accomplished at making myself miserable. Occasionally I enjoy it. I traversed the courtyard and when I ran out of courtyard to traverse, swept the empty white halls like some lab-coated ghost, stewing in my own misery of course, and hardly taking note of where I actually went. Footsteps seemed to follow me, but I avoided them. I had no desire to see anyone. At work, and anywhere else, there was no one who wanted to see me.

Claire’s appearance was sudden. I hadn’t even been thinking of her, or anything from that day, but rather the echoing footfalls that simply wouldn’t cease wherever I went. They continued, soft, uneven steps that mirrored mine, as long as I walked; they stopped soon after I stopped. I grew irritated with them, and at last turned on my heel and around the corner I had just turned.

A woman was leaning against the wall as if exhausted. Her face was turned down, but she looked remarkably like Claire. I didn’t know anyone in the building who looked like that.

 _I finally did it,_ I thought. _I’ve been working too hard and I’m giving myself hallucinations. I’ve started having waking nightmares about her._

The woman slid along the wall with stumbling, drunken steps, lifted her eyes, and fell to her knees right in front of me. It _was_ Claire—the same Claire that had stepped into our deathtrap ten years ago. Her glasses were broken, and she was bent double as if in pain or very winded. “Esscuse me? I was hoping you could tell me,” she said dazedly, trying to focus on my face.  “W-where am I?” As if only this effort had tired her, she collapsed with her forehead on the tip of my shoe. She loosely grasped my pant leg to try to pull herself up, but that was all she could manage.

I knelt down, reached out to help her up. I touched her. She was warm, she was real.

Claire blinked, squinted at me, and a look of horrified recognition crossed her face. “It really worked, didn’t it? You look like Dimitri…”

“I am Dimitri,” I said, barely able to speak myself. “And you’re…Claire, you’re alive…”

“Just barely, feels like,” she said thickly.

I held her. She was shivering. She was fragile, but she was really here.

“How far’d I go?” she said. “How many years later is it?”

“Ten exactly,” I said. I glanced at my watch, at hers. “Give or take a few minutes.” I helped her stand.

“Oh my god…” She leaned into me, too weak to walk unsupported. “You look so old.”

“I’ve been working.” I had to get her out of here. I could take her home.

“On what?”

“The same time machine. I thought the last one hadn’t worked, and it—“ This would be a lot to explain. “You need to rest. I’ll take you to my place, and then I’ll explain everything to you. But it’s gotten complicated…”

“Complicated? What, did I cause some time paradoxes or something?” she half-joked. Even exhausted as she was, she was still Claire.  “Ow.”

“Not that I’ve noticed—is something wrong?”

“Just feeling awful…I don’t think time travel has much viability as a leisure activity…”

I took off my coat and placed it over her head and shoulders, being sure to keep her supported. “Wear this, just in case…I don’t think it would be good if anyone were to see you as we left. You were supposed to have died in the explosion.”

“Explosion?” She halted in her slow progress.

“The machine exploded and…Claire, everyone thinks you’re dead.”

“I guess that makes sense,” she said in a low voice. After a moment she tried to start walking again, and I aided her. “I get it. So it would be weird if I reemerged suddenly, huh?”

“Certainly.” We stepped into the sunlight, and, painfully slowly, crossed the road to the parking lot.

“But what about my mum and dad and—oh god, Hershel, what would he do without me? I can’t just act dead forever. I have to tell them I’m ok…”

“Don’t be hasty. A lot has happened. I think you should hear all the facts first.” I gingerly loosened my hold on her to search for my car keys. I always forget where I put them; this was so routine it was ridiculous. The minutiae of the universe didn’t even care that a miracle had just occurred.

“You’re right...Oh, you’ve still got the same car,” she said with a note of amusement, as I laid her gently down in the back seat. She held onto my sleeve, though I offered her my hand.

It’s true, I thought as I started the car, it was an old thing. And not very clean at all. “I’m sorry.”

She laughed—a beautiful sound—and it had been so long since I’d heard it that I nearly melted. I had forgotten how much I’d loved her, when I was a younger man, but I was remembering so fast it made me want to cry.

“This is so strange…they replaced that little ice cream shop on the corner there. What a shame.” She raised herself up as best she could to drink in the sights of London as we passed them by.  “So, what amazing new technology have we developed in the past ten years?”

“Hmm, well, cell phone technology has gotten quite impressive lately.” I glanced in the rearview mirror at her. “And then there’s color television.”

“Oh, that’ll never catch on.”

I nearly missed a turn just marveling in her alive-ness. “What was it like?”

“The time travel?” She laid her head down again as if the mere mention of it tired her. “Scary. It was like…hm. It was like free-floating in outer space and being squeezed through a tiny dark tunnel at the same time. I swear my heart stopped! Thought I had died, for a minute.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I suppose I should start writing about it.”

“No, you shouldn’t. A lot of things have changed, Claire.” My voice hardened. “I mean it. You ought to lay low.”

“I’m just dead, not a criminal, Dimitri.”

“I know. I just…I’m under a lot of pressure right now.” As if that was an excuse. I knew full well I just wanted Claire all to myself, to be her guide in a world that was alien to her.

“All right. You can tell me about it at your place.” Her eyes traveled over the old magazines on the floor and the ends of her mussed-up hair. She bit her fingernail. “Do you know what happened to Hershel?”

Like anyone else who read the newspaper, I knew exactly what had happened to Hershel. He had continued being a remarkably intelligent and personable man who was incredibly interesting to everyone who met him. “What do you mean by that?”

“Just…is he ok? Is he teaching? Does he…has he moved on?”

“He’s a professor at Gressenheller, and I suppose he’s successful. He’s acquired a bit of a reputation for meddling in police investigations and otherwise making strange discoveries.”

“Oh, he still does that? You’re kidding! I’m so glad.” She looked distant. “But do you think he has anyone…?”

“I don’t claim to know anything about his personal life, Claire, but it’s been ten years. A lot changes in ten years.”

She nodded, still chewing on her nail. “I know that.”


	2. Chapter 2

If I had known she was coming, I would have cleaned my apartment. I never had guests, and so it was in its usual state of disarray. I apologized to her the whole way up the stairs and through the door, but she laughed it off, and nearly lost her balance again, and leaned on my shoulder; I supported her. She seemed to be in good spirits, but the physical toll taken on her had only lessened slightly. Claire had always been the person who could find a reason to laugh, even after this: after becoming a miracle, being relocated in time.

She made a beeline for the couch. “Here’s your coat back,” she said, slipping it off in one fluid movement and handing it to me. “I’m still feeling a little sick, but I think a good hot shower would help. Mind if I use yours?”

“I…think I should clean it first,” I said with a nervous laugh.

“Okay, okay…” She laid down again, still not confident in her legs. “Can I listen to the radio? I think I should get my bearings, being in a new time and all.”

“I don’t use it much. Feel free to dust it off.”

“Thank you.”

I turned my back on her and went solemnly to clean the bathroom (something that, now that I thought about it, had not been fully accomplished in a long time).  Radio static ripped through the house, then receded as Claire located the news.

I threw myself into mindless cleaning. The full momentousness of the situation had still not dawned on me, and I knew that; I was just waiting for it to hit me the way it should. I had worked toward this accomplishment for most of my life; yet at the moment my biggest concern was getting the dried toothpaste off the rim of the sink. People think in stupid ways.

I’d have to tell Clive everything. Then he’d give me all the funding I could possibly need, no matter what the request; he’d never second-guess me again. The designs had worked, the machine was only a prototype but it had worked, it just needed tweaking. It would be difficult to recreate it, incredibly difficult. But Claire could help. And Clive had that plan to get more of my colleagues on our team. Perhaps it was underhanded, but we both had a grudge against Bill; I would work with him no matter his methods. As long as everything was set aright.

This was an unexpected complication, but if I could keep Claire here, I wouldn’t have to worry about her causing an uproar at least. And if I could spend more time with her…it would be so good to have a proper friend again, someone I could really talk to, who understood the mess I was in….if I had something like that to look forward to when I came home every day…

No, she wasn’t my possession. She wouldn’t ever be. I couldn’t control her. I had spent too long with machines and formulas, and now I was thinking of a woman as an object.

After I had cleaned everything within my reach to a newly attained standard of perfection, I cleaned it all again and returned to Claire. To my surprise, she was crying; curled into a ball, huddled in the corner of the couch. The radio droned on.

“Claire?” I sat next to her. Gently, I touched her shoulder, hoping the contact would be comforting, or at least that she would look at me. I wasn’t much good at this kind of thing.

She sniffled and tried to blink away her tears; they glistened in the dim light of the dirty room. “I’m so far away from home.” Saying it aloud must have made it seem even worse. A fresh wave of tears came.

I nodded sympathetically—of course I had no idea what to say—and awkwardly rubbed her back as she wailed, not sure whether I should be looking at her. I felt pathetically helpless, wishing I could do something that would make this all better, but I doubted anything I had in mind would work. Telling her I was there for her seemed insignificant.

“Ten years…I missed ten whole years,” she gasped. “I was listening to the radio, and all the politicians are different, and I don’t know what’s going on! Bill is Prime Minister…How did that happen…? I missed all of it!” She wiped her face with her sleeve, taking off her cracked glasses for the first time. She looked vulnerable without them.

“It’ll be all right…we’ll figure something out,” I said, though it was meaningless.

“What if my mum or dad is sick or something? I missed all my friends’ weddings—and Hershel and I had so many plans! He was going to propose to m-me the other night and then he l-lost his nerve—he thinks I can’t read him but I can, and I was going to let him take as m-much time as he wanted, I’m sure he was getting up the nerve to do it tonight, and then I went and d-died! We could have been married, Dimitri…and I missed all of it…” The more she talked, the harder she cried, until she was completely overcome and let me hold her again. She put her arms around me and wept into my chest as if I were her dearest friend.

I wondered what I, the one who had been too late to save her, had done to deserve this privilege. It was my fault she was in all this pain. I hated to hear her crying, but her body fit against mine as if it belonged there; I almost wished she could be this weak forever, just so I could be her guardian a little longer.

\--

Claire being who she was, by that evening she was perfectly fine—on the surface, at least. She wanted to know everything about me, about Bill, about the world, about the rebuilding of the time machine, and I held nothing back. Not even the arrangement I had with Clive. She was fascinated; she asked questions, she even took notes. I felt a hint of pride that retiring, awkward me could keep this wonderful woman entranced for so long, even though I knew it wasn’t really me that she was interested in. And so I dragged her into the same mess I was in.

She stayed quiet, considering it all. “I can’t believe Bill.”

“I’m so sorry I didn’t get there in time.”

“No, it’s…it’s fine. I’m alive, aren’t I?” She tried to smile.

“Yes. That’s all that matters.” I smiled back.

“And now that I’m back, what will we do?” She picked at the last green threads coming off of the balding couch.

“I could use your help on the machine.”

A dark look crossed her face. “I need some time to think about that. How do you know this Clive person is trustworthy? You barely know him.”

“Just…the look in his eyes, I suppose. He’s hardly more than a kid anyway. He just wants to prevent the accident as much as we do.”

Claire slid off the couch and padded into the tiny kitchen. “I have a question about that accident. Was there a body?”

“Yes, there was.” I thought I had seen a mouse in the kitchen yesterday. I hoped not.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I…I saw it myself.”

“Well, that’s not right.” She shifted cereal boxes and didn’t find anything she liked. “Because I’m right here now.”

That was true. I didn’t want to think about it, but it was. She couldn’t be dead there if she was alive here.

“Something has to happen, sometime here in the future, that sends me back to the past, at the same time that the explosion happens, so that I can die there.”

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

“Do you have any tea?”

“I confess I prefer coffee.”

Already, my fantasies of living with Claire in her terrifying new future were dead. Somehow, in a way I couldn’t predict, she would be taken from me again. But how? _I_ would certainly never allow her to die. Just thinking about returning her to the moment of the blast made me sick.

Claire sighed, leaned against the kitchen counter, and stuck her elbow in a pool of milk. “Ew.” She wiped it up.

            “So sorry about that…”

            “Oh, no, it’s perfectly fine,” she said, and I knew she meant it. “Do you mind if I have that shower now? I’m still feeling kind of sick. And then I think I’ll take a nap…this is like having the worst jetlag ever…”

            “You’re welcome to anything you want. My house is yours.”

            She smiled at me. “Thank you. You have no idea how glad I am to have a friend in the future.”

            “You’re welcome,” I said, too lovestruck to manage much more.

            --

In the middle of the night, Clive decided he had to call me. Ordinarily I would have let the phone ring—anyone rude enough to call at that hour deserved to be ignored—but Claire was still sleeping on the couch and I didn’t want it to wake her. So I went sleepily to the phone in the kitchen, nearly stumbling over my own socks, and found myself greeted by the remarkably-too-awake voice of Clive.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he said as if his insomnia was some matter of national importance. “You know even after all these years I still have nightmares about it?”

“Oh. Do you.” So did I.

Clive cleared his throat nervously. “Do you still need Hershel Layton for that project?”

I glanced at Claire, who was thankfully still sleeping peacefully. Her lips were parted a little. “Now that you mention it, I may or may not. Something new has come up.”

“Like what?” he said sharply. “I won’t have our plans disrupted on some whim, Dimitri. You said you wanted the Professor! You needed him!”

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. “Just forget it. Never mind.”

“What kind of thing was it?” The pitch of his voice rose dangerously. “What could _possibly_ be so important that you have to keep the Professor out of it? I worked on Future London almost entirely for him! That’s why I’m being Luke, remember?! I decided!”

Clive went through phases. This was a bad phase.

I waited until his inexplicable distress subsided and his breathing calmed down. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” he said, in a weak but stubborn voice.

“I don’t know if this is the proper time for this,” I said as calmly as I could.

“Of course it’s the proper time. I need to be prepared to make necessary modifications to our plans at any time, and I can’t sleep.”

“Very well then. Though it’s startling…and if you could please keep your voice down,” I said with another glance towards Claire. “I discovered today that the experiment of ten years ago did, momentarily, produce a working time vortex.”

“I suppose that’s a good sign,” he said coolly. His air of being in control of everything was already returning; it came and went so fast. “Is that all?”

“And something from ten years ago did travel through it. A person.”

He calculated for a moment. “Living or dead?”

“Very much living, though disoriented. Her name is Claire Folly. She was a lab assistant…and Hershel Layton’s...girlfriend, you could say.”

Dead silence but for the static of the phone.

“Clive?”

“Where is this woman?” he said at last.

“In my living room.”

“And what are you planning on doing with her?”

I gazed at Claire from across the room and absentmindedly stroked my beard. “Keeping her here, I suppose. She would be helpful on the project in future London if she’d agree to work with me, but she seems to be on the fence. I could use her memories, too.”

“Putting her in Future London seems like a good idea,” Clive agreed. “At any rate, she can’t be allowed to wander free. If someone noticed her, it might be more trouble than I’d like to hush it up.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“What sort of state is she in?”

“As I said, somewhat disoriented—apparently time travel puts a great physical and mental strain on the body—“

“That might be good to know.”

“—but aside from that and of course distress from being relocated, I’d say she’s fine. She’s sleeping now.”

“Hmm. Continue to study her. Maybe there’s some side effects that aren’t immediately obvious.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Oh, and, Dimitri?”

“Yes?”

“I think it would be best if you were to start working entirely in Future London starting this week. Bring Miss Folly with you.”

My heart sank. “Very well.” My days in the sun were over already.

“I’m interested in hearing more about this woman. Keep me updated.”

“I will.”

“Were you sleeping?”

“I was.”

“Fine then,” he said, and hung up.

 


	3. Chapter 3

The next morning she woke up earlier than I did. I was awakened by the smell of burning eggs.

“I think your stove is broken,” she called as I stumbled out of the bathroom. I had moved the shaving cream when I had been cleaning and now it had completely disappeared. Now I had to look for it, half-awake, un-groomed, in front of her.

“It has been for some time,” I answered wearily. “I just avoid it.”

“What a bachelor you are. I’m sorry.” She laughed and started scraping mangled eggs into the trash. “I just wanted to pay you back a little for everything you’ve done for me. Letting me stay here…putting up with me yesterday when I was…being stupid…”

“Claire, you’ve teleported through time. No one’s ever done that before. Your reaction was totally acceptable.”

She shook her head. “No, it was stupid. I shouldn’t have…led you on like that.”

“I didn’t mind.”

I had said the wrong thing. For an instant, I thought she looked resentful.

But that was only for an instant. She put the frying pan back on the malfunctioning stove and clapped her hands. “So! What are we going to do today, in my exciting new future?”

I nervously tugged on my uncombed hair. “I’d like to show you the project if I could.”

“All of it? The underground and everything?”

“Yes. I’ll give you the grand tour.”

“Wow.” She raised her eyebrows. “I’d love to see this for myself.”

I still couldn’t tell what she honestly thought about the project. I had trusted that Claire, of all people, would understand my motivations and praise my hard work, but so far all she had been was neutral, a listener. What did she really think of me now? Was she surprised by the man I had become? Or disgusted?

I also wondered where the shaving cream had gone. Claire couldn’t have taken it, could she? Did she use my bathroom again? I suppose that was only expected, and I should move past it. But still, things were organized in there.  And I needed to shave. “I’d love to show it to you. And…if you don’t mind, I’d like to run some tests down there. On you.”

“That’s fine. I honestly still feel a little weird this morning, so maybe the time travel did something to me that we can’t see?”

I looked behind the radio, in the filing cabinet, under the couch.

“You seem a little distressed, Dimitri.”

“Do I?” I said distractedly. I checked all the kitchen cabinets in case I had mistaken it for whipped cream or something.

“It’s in the hall closet.” She picked my hat up—she had kidnapped it when I had taken it off last night—and brushed lint off the brim.

“What?”

“The shaving cream. I put it in the hall closet, because there wasn’t any room for it in the bathroom.”

“Oh.” I blushed bright red, I’m sure.

This amused her somehow. “I’ve never seen a man with so much stuff in his bathroom. I swear it’s wall-to-wall shampoo in there.”

“I didn’t want to run out,” I mumbled.

Claire laughed—I thrilled. “No, you don’t need to be embarrassed! I admire a man who cares about his appearance.”

“Well, I try, I guess,” I said, or something to that effect. This was already starting to become ten years ago, when I’d tried to communicate with her through a confused lovesick daze. Except now my hair was grey, and she was fifteen years my junior.  And I was still in my pajamas.

“God, you’re so funny,” she said, turning away from me to continue scavenging for food. “You’re just like Hershel.”

I paused, for a minute. But it had been a thoughtless comment on her part. I helped her find something for breakfast, made her a cup of coffee she politely pretended to like, and retreated back to the bathroom under a relentless barrage of good-natured shampoo jokes. As soon as I had sequestered myself in there, I leaned against the door and closed my eyes. This was life with Claire. I liked it as much as I’d thought I would.

We rode the bus to Midland Road; she wore my hat low over her eyes. It was a rainy morning, but nothing ever stops in London. There was only standing room for us. On all sides, people were pressing in, talking relentlessly over the bus’s motor and the sounds of the traffic outside. If the entire population of the city had to be breathing down my neck, I wanted Claire at least to be closer to me, but she was intent on reading the newspaper over some other fellow’s shoulder. It was a feature story. It was about Hershel Layton.

“Claire,” I whispered, “don’t hurt yourself.”

She didn’t seem to hear me.

“Excuse me, could I see that?” Claire asked the man. She barely waited for an answer before lifting the paper out of his hands.

“Claire, please,” I tried to say. I was drowned out by the noise of the bus. Maybe she was ignoring me. “ _Claire._ ” I spoke more harshly this time, and at last I got her attention.

“You be quiet. I’m allowed to read.” Trying to keep her balance on the swerving bus, she held the paper close to her face, read the article, looked intently at the photographs. It was a two-page spread on some bizarre occurrence in an old mining town, some antique heirloom that had led to a treasure hunt, and it seemed to be the strangest thing Hershel had done yet.

I could see the shades of different emotions warring on her face; a sort of pained fake smile won. “Thank you, sir,” she said, and handed the paper back to its owner. “Thank you very much.”

The man nodded, the bus stopped, and he rose and hobbled towards the doors. Claire sank into his seat as he left. When she saw me looking at her, she made as if to get up. “Did you want to sit down?”

“I’m fine. Are you?”

“Yup.” She played with a strand of her hair. “Did you know that he has a teenage daughter now? And a little boy too.”

“Well, it has been ten—“

“Yes, I know that,” she snapped. “But the math doesn’t add up. I just wish I knew what was going on with him, that’s all.”

She stared out at the grey streets. Her breath fogged the cold glass. After a minute, she crossed her arms and drew her knees up to her chest. Then she fiddled with the brim of my hat as if about to take it off. I suddenly feared that she was thinking of leaving me, and the next time the doors flew open she would bolt away from me and be lost forever in the quiet chaos of the busy streets.

But restless as she was, she stayed.

When the bus stopped at Midland Road, I offered her my arm. She didn’t take it, but as we negotiated the narrow bus steps, she did touch my shoulder. We walked down to the end of the road in silence, helping each other around the puddles.

At the clock shop’s door, I stopped her and knocked with a series of irregular taps Clive had taught me. Claire stood back and shivered in the rain.

After a moment, the old woman Spring answered the door. She always wore the same smile, plastic-like, but it dropped when she saw my guest.

“Spring, this is Claire. She’s a lab assistant.”

The smile sprung back up. “Ah, well, welcome, miss,” she said, shifting out of the way so we could enter.  “Cogg’s in the back.”

Claire’s eyes widened as she stepped into the room, so covered in clocks they were even pinned to the ceiling. The din of them all ticking away was deafening. Unsettling. Her hand went to something in her pocket.

“The young sir went down a while ago,” Spring called to us as we walked away from her. “I don’t know if he wants to meet you or what.”

I sighed. “He probably wants to see you, Claire. I told him about you last night.”

“That’s fine,” she said. As we entered the back room, she raised her eyebrows and let out a long breath. “Wow.”

“It’s awe-inspiring, isn’t it?”

Most of the back room was taken up by a huge old clock. It was an antique, something Cogg had appropriated to use as a set piece for the Future London act. And it was the sort of thing only Clive would be able to get: common sense would have put it in a museum, behind glass. But like myself, Clive no longer had any common sense.

Cogg was waiting for us beside it, pulling up his sleeves. “Thought we’d be seeing you today, Dimitri,” he said in his usual vigorous way. “And who’s the young lady? Your daughter?” His tiresome senior-citizen humor.

“I’m not that young,” she laughed.

“This is Claire,” I said. “She’s one of us.”

At this Claire shifted her weight, pulled her jacket closer around her.

“Well then, guess I’ll fire her up. You hold on tight there, miss.” Cogg firmly grasped the giant crank of the machine and pulled it down.

“Hold on to what—oh!” Claire nearly fell as the floor lurched downward without any warning. I held her steady as we hurtled underground.

When we stopped, with a last jerk, she looked positively green. I rushed her outside with a hasty nod to Cogg and she vomited into a trash bin.

“Feeling alright?”

“Ugh,” she replied, and spit.

After that, any romantic notions of giving her the grand tour were defunct. We took the shortest route possible to the laboratory, which to my dismay involved the leaky tunnel under the Thames.

When I asked her what she thought of the hard work Clive and I had done, she impassively replied that it was definitely impressive. I couldn’t discern what she was really thinking. But it’s not as if she could really be unmoved by all this, I consoled myself, especially since I had done it all for her. Certainly it had to impress her as a fellow scientist. And Future London was operating in top form today—it was a glorious sunny day so real it was indistinguishable from anything aboveground, and made even more startling for the rain up there. Claire wondered how I still had time to work at the Institute with this to manage, but to be honest, by this point Future London was nearly self-sufficient. It only required the occasional maintenance check, and that wasn’t my job.

“I’m sorry for the water…” I said as we sloshed under the Thames. “I wish I could carry you somehow.”

For the first time since early that morning, she looked at me and smiled. “I know you do. But I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

She walked past me. It took me a moment to find my footing and trail after her.

\--

In the most private of the laboratory rooms, where all the really fine and possibly-filched machines were, Clive was waiting for us. His legs were crossed, his fingers steepled, and the look in his eyes was as erratic as it had ever been. “Dimitri. I’ve been waiting.”

I wondered how long he had been in that pose.

“And this is the time traveler, isn’t it?”

I had barely nodded before he leapt up and started circling her like an animal. “She’s not that pretty,” he said venomously. “I guess I could see why one could settle, though. I suppose you’re a real brain too, aren’t you, Miss Folly? Like tends to seek out like.”

Claire seemed unsure of what to do with him. Her gaze flickered nervously to me.

“Stop it, Clive,” I said. “Don’t you dare talk to her that way.”

Clive took a step closer to Claire and glanced back at me, gauging my reaction. His lips parted in a smile. “Claire, what’s it like knowing that everyone you love has moved on from you?”

“Why would you care?” Claire said, her voice almost angry.

“Clive,” I warned, “this is not professionally appropriate. You are acting like a child.”

He kept his manic, dangerous gaze on me; his smile froze, then slowly faded to the barest smirk. “Very well then. Let’s be _professional_ , then, shall we?” He moved back to his chair and slumped down in it. “Miss Folly, yesterday you time-traveled. How’re you feeling?”

“Still a bit ill,” she said, cautiously.

“And what did—oh. Pardon me. I haven’t introduced myself.” He straightened his tie. “I’m Clive Dove. You scientists killed my parents in your experiment, and turned me into a broken wreck of a man.” He thrust his hand towards her. “Pleased to meet you.”

“I’m…well aware of what we did, Clive,” she said, taking his hand after a moment’s hesitation and shaking it gently. “And I’m very sorry.”

“No you aren’t. You haven’t had ten years to stew in your own guilt like Dimitri has,” he said. “You didn’t even get to see the carnage. I still remember Dimitri there, running around like a chicken with its head cut off, bawling at the top of his lungs…”

He looked at me and smiled nastily. If there is one person in this world that I honestly wish physical violence upon, it’s him.

“Well, Clive, I’m sorry I haven’t had enough time for proper…penance,” Claire said. “But I’m honestly still trying to understand the world that I’m in. I’m sure you know a lot has changed—“

“Like the Prime Minister, for example,” Clive said loudly. “Were you in on that, Claire? Were you going to get a nice little gig as a secretary for your pains? Fudging all those safety warrants must have been exhausting—“

“Claire didn’t know about that, Clive,” I snapped. “She was only an assistant. Bill was the only one of us with the whole picture.”

 “Oh yes,” Clive said gently. “You’re very good at not getting the whole picture, Dimitri.” He hopped out of his chair again and strode over to me, looking me in the eye as he approached. Even though he was a head shorter than me and barely more than a skinny teenager, his presence was always threatening, on some primal level. “Look at him, Claire. Isn’t he cute?” He tugged on the end of my scarf.

“Can we get back to science, please?” I said.

Clive slid his hand up the scarf and for a crazy instant I thought he was going to strangle me, but he only tore the scarf away from my neck. He let it dangle from his fingers for a moment, then let it drop. He left it there on the floor.

I wasn’t certain what he was expecting, so I did nothing.

“Well? Aren’t you going to pick it up?” he demanded.

I sighed and did so. “What’s wrong with you today, Clive?”

His eyes darted to Claire. “Why don’t I tell you later?”

“Why not now?”

He slammed his hand down, hard, on a control panel. Behind him, an entire wall of screens went dark.  “Because I don’t feel like telling you in front of little miss Time-Traveling Wonder Bitch here.”

He stormed out of the room, his interview forgotten.  I knew him well enough to know he would want to resume it days later, at the most inconvenient time possible, and he would blame its interruption on me. But we wouldn’t see him again today.

“He’s unbalanced,” I explained to Claire as way of apology.

We settled into the easy routine of checking screens and running tests, preparing for the complete examination of Claire’s time-traveled body. In that triumphantly Clive-less moment, my hopes were high.


	4. Chapter 4

Claire’s clothes lay in a neat pile on the cold floor of the lab. She was behind a screen, but I still wished she were wearing something.

“Do you want my coat?” I asked feebly.

She didn’t answer me. I hoped Clive hadn’t upset her that much.

“Claire?”

After a moment, she found a voice to speak with—one far higher and shakier than her usual. “Dimitri, will you come look at this? Quick.” She sounded like she was going to cry, or vomit again. Of course I rushed over to her.

I threw my coat over her as I came behind the screen, but she didn’t put it on—she was shaking too much. Violently.

“ I saw it earlier—when I was using your shower—but I thought it was just the lighting. Look at me…Look!”

She extended a shaking hand and arm, the other covering her breasts, and there was a faint sort of glow on her, barely visible in the shadow behind the screen.

I grasped her arm, amazed. My mouth was dry, but I had no words to put in it. “Hold on,” I said at last, and with my heart pounding in my ears, got up to turn off the lights.

There she was, faintly but unmistakably giving off her own luminescence in the dark. It was as if there was a great lamp under her bare skin, illuminating her for me.

“We need to run those tests,” I said. “Now.” I was transfixed, horrified. Even as I watched, though, the light started to fade. “Claire!” Panicked, I thought she was disappearing.

When I turned on the lights, though, she was still there, but slumped on the floor.

I cautiously returned to her side.

“I’m gonna throw up again,” she murmured. “Or faint.”

“Don’t. Claire, stay with me.” I propped her up, but she didn’t even have the strength to keep her head up and it lolled pathetically on her neck.

“I think I arready left.” Her voice was so soft that it frightened me. And her eyes were sleepy and full of stars, gazing into some beautiful distance I couldn’t see.

“You’re scaring me!”

Suddenly she went rigid, with the gasp of someone noticing they stand on the brink of a great precipice.

“Claire?!”

Confused, she looked up into my eyes, searching for something in my face. “…’M I in the future?”

“You should know that already.” My heart was beating so fast. What if she didn’t remember?

“It’s just, for a minute I thought I was in two places at once.” Her eyes slid down, then back up, then around the lab. “Were we running the tests?”

I laughed nervously. “We were about to when you passed out. I’m sorry that…sorry that I saw you like this.”

“No, it’s fine. I trust you, Dimitri…” Already her voice was regaining its Claire-ness. I helped her shakily stand up. “Let’s get those tests done, then.”

I resumed my position at the control panel, full of trepidation. I was still trying to regain my breath. I was a scientist; it was my duty to know. But for the first time, I really didn’t want to. For the first time, I thought that transcending time was something truly dangerous. Claire’s sickeningly blank expression, brain-dead and so unlike her, wouldn’t leave my head. I didn’t want to see the evidence that time travel might have left its mark on her.

Claire sat quiet and still, shivering only a little as machines scanned her, analyzed the very fabric she was made of. I waited for the results.

They came. My suspicions were confirmed.

“You’re right,” I whispered. Then, louder, “Claire, you were right. You are in two places at once—or, your body’s trying to be.”

“That’s not possible,” she said. “Please give me my clothes. I want to see this.”

I gingerly handed her the small, cool bundle of her clothes, and she took them from me. When she stepped out of the machine, she was still wavering a little.

“What you’re saying is, my body’s trying to return to the place where it used to be,” she said.

I nodded wordlessly, gestured for her to look at the computer’s printouts.

Her eyebrows came together like they always did when she was thinking. “Is this…am I really that radioactive?”

I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I only nodded again. My mind was unraveling these numbers and figures faster than I wanted it to, and Claire’s fate wouldn’t stop replaying before my eyes. She had escaped from it. But now it was pulling her back. Trying to take her from me again so soon.

“It looks like…” She pressed her fingertip on the paper, then tapped it. “Molecular instability, and they’re all getting pulled in the same direction. By…probably by the flow of time.” She took a deep breath. “That’s a big discovery.”

“I don’t care,” I said, struggling to speak rather than sob. “You’re going back. We have to make you stay.”

“We already know that we don’t manage. I died ten years ago,” she said quietly.

“But we can change that!”

Claire shook her head bitterly. “No, Dimitri. We can’t change the way nature works. You know I wasn’t supposed to time travel. That was a mistake, and it’s getting fixed.”

“We don’t know if that’s how nature works! We haven’t done enough tests yet!”

“You’re such a scientist,” she said with a sad little smile. She looked at the floor, pressed her lips together. “I think I’ll go get some fresh air. Or whatever they have down here.”

I nodded, stayed frozen in place. “I’ll…I’ll stay here,” I said thickly.

I stayed there for a very long time.

 


	5. Chapter 5

 I feverishly worked through the rest of the day and night, thinking only of Claire. She returned to me the next morning. I worried about where she had slept, but she wouldn’t let me fuss over her. She only smiled dismissively.

“And what about you? Did you sleep at all?”

I shook my head. “No…I can’t lose my train of thought. Now that we know the time machine is imperfect, we can go back and fix those flaws…”

“Imperfect? What are you talking about?”

“You’re going back because the time machine wasn’t complete yet,” I explained breathlessly. This was my theory of the past manic day. “If we go back and fix the imperfections that led to that—we just need to find out what those are. It requires more testing. If I only had that damn rabbit…that’s Subject 3, he’s missing…if we could test, we could make it work. If we make it work, we could stabilize you, and you could stay here! You wouldn’t ever have to go back…”

“And what would I do?” she murmured. “Dimitri. The reason why I’m going back is because I was never supposed to have come here in the first place. We broke the laws of nature. Now nature is fixing itself.”

“And what made you think that?” I said angrily. “You were so excited about this project when we were working on it. What changed?”

“ _Everything_ changed. I got stranded ten years from home and the world is so different, and the man I love has moved on, and he’s got kids and everyone knows who he is and he’s so different from what I knew, and you’re an obsessive mad scientist and Bill is a greedy politician—I’m not trying to be some sort of highbrow technophobe or something, Dimitri, I just…I don’t think I was supposed to have seen all this. I didn’t want to.”

“Once the initial shock wears off,” I said, “I’m sure you’ll change your mind.”

“Maybe I will,” she said noncommittally; she was giving me what I wanted to hear to avoid an argument.  Then she suddenly smiled and reached for my hand. “Why don’t we get you out of this stuffy lab? Let’s go somewhere together. You need a break.”

She was trying to distract me. I took her warm, soft little hand, held it as if it were the most precious thing in the world, and let her succeed.

\--

Claire was so lively, so clever, so good at hiding her conflicted feelings, and she knew that I was smitten with her; she was able to lead me around London all day. Already she was making it her own city, befriending the locals, finding secret places to hide (and she showed me a few). It was easy for me to let myself believe that she was mine now, and Hershel was as far in the past for her as he was for me. We didn’t speak of anything like work or time travel or the past, and we pretended that the light of her body struggling to return was only the sunlight shining on her face. I wanted to see her the way she had been in the lab again, but without any terror or illness; but she neatly maneuvered around my clumsy advances so gently I didn’t feel embarrassed at all. And I didn’t think she did either. It was the perfect day, and it lasted late into the night. Only at the end, when she saw me back to the lab and we exchanged a wistful goodbye, did it occur to me that this had been a farewell gift. A last day of fun. She had completely given up.

I returned to my room in the lab with equal amounts of drunken elation and dizzy fear for tomorrow. My head spun with thoughts of Claire, smiling at me and touching me, shivering naked and losing her mind, lashing out, laughing, crying, being ill, being alive, dying. All of them bled together into one collage of everything about her I loved and hated, and there was so much of it I thought I myself would burst into particles of light and disappear.

Clive was lying on my bed.

When he saw my face, he laughed and rolled over, comfortable as if he were in his own quarters. “You should have seen your face just now.”

I think I was in shock.

“Didn’t think you’d see me here, hm? Well, I’ve got something important to say. And I’m not sleeping tonight anyway. Too excited.”

I put my hand on the door handle. “’Excited’,” I stated.

He laughed again. “Hold your horses, Dr. Stahngun. You don’t remember what tomorrow is, do you?”

Of course I did. “The exhibition.”

He nodded. “Put on your best performance…I hope you’re looking forward to seeing our old friend Bill Hawks again. And then all those scientists…”

I sat next to him. “The time machine can finally be completed.”

“Will it?” His smug expression shifted, revealing a hint of uncertainty. “Do you honestly think you can make a time machine?”

“I have to.”

This was what threw me off about him and kept me relying on him: his undeniable boyishness, the sense he gave off of being an overgrown adolescent. Now he pulled his knees up to his chin and put his shoes on the bed. They were women’s shoes. “The part after this is going to be the hard part. I hope you’re prepared.”

“Have you written the letter to Hershel?”

“About a thousand times. I think I finally have it right, though. And soon I’m going to send it.” He curled into a tighter ball. “I hope we can fool him.”

“That’s going to be up to you.”

He nodded. “By the way, I know I said some stupid things to Wonder Bitch. I’m sorry.”

I couldn’t know if he really was. He was an excellent actor. “You should tell _her_ that. And her name is Claire.”

“I don’t like that name. It sounds too much like mine.”

I sighed. “You might not be planning on sleeping, Clive, but I need to.”

He slid off of the bed. “I think I’m going to go look for her.”

I paused; what was he planning? But the look on his face seemed as close to innocuous as I had seen it in weeks. “Tell me where she stays, will you? And if she doesn’t have anywhere, please find her a place.”

He seemed to think for a minute, then shrugged. “Goodnight, Dr. Stahngun.”

\--

Though Claire may have given up, I never would. The single day she had taken away from me could be easily regained if I redoubled my pace. Even as I rode the lift up to the real London, my thoughts were still back in the lab, still trying to crack open those elusive secrets of time travel. I was certain there were only a few left. After all of my progress, surely I was on the right track?

The kidnapping of the Prime Minister went off without complications. Pathetic. _He_ was pathetic. I’m sure he recognized me, but saying so would have compromised his esteemed reputation, so he said nothing at all.

I wished we could kill him after this business was over, as it was no less than what he deserved, but Clive wouldn’t hear of it. I wondered what he was planning, but then, that was Clive: he had whims. I had learned to accommodate them.

We stored the Prime Minister in a secure if not particularly comfortable location. And then I returned to the lab.

Claire waited in the dim room, pale and still as a ghost. My research materials were in her hands.

“You’re still working,” she said.

“I am.”

“What can I give you to make you stop?”

“You can give me my research.” I held out my hand for it, but she hid it behind her back.

“No, Dimitri. I want you to _stop_. _Working_.”

“You know I can’t do that,” I said. “I can’t lose you twice.”

“But you have to. Look at what you’re doing, Dimitri. All those kidnapped scientists. You’re tearing people away from their families and imprisoning them in a world they don’t know. As someone who…” Her voice faltered. “As someone who had the same thing happen to them, I can’t allow you to make anyone else suffer.”

I couldn’t bear to see her standing there with such a sickeningly sorrowful and noble expression on her face, speaking that way—as if she knew everything. “Do you even understand what’s happening to you? Claire, you’re disintegrating. Your body is being broken up into tiny little pieces, so you can get sucked ten years into the past, so you can die there! You can’t possibly tell me that you want to die!”

She was unmoved. “My life is _not_ worth all this—I’m not the most important person in the world.”

“You are to _me_!”

 Her gaze shifted from my face to my feet.

“Claire, I love you.” My voice shook. “More than I’ve ever loved anyone else, so much that I can’t stand it. After you died, I didn’t know what to do with myself—I threw away my life—“

“Yes, you did,” she said quietly. She took two steps closer to me, looked straight at me; all the lights of all the machines were reflected in her black eyes. “If you really love me, then respect my decision. I have decided to die when I should, whenever that time comes.”

“Claire! Listen to what you’re saying—“

“No, listen to what you’re saying. I’m not going to defy the laws of nature for you just because you can’t find the strength to move on. I know you can, or, you could have once—you were a good man, Dimitri. One of the best I ever knew.”

“Don’t say that,” I choked. I knew I was no longer a good person. But I couldn’t take hearing it from her.

She slid past me, towards the door. Leaving me again.

In a mad moment without thinking, I grabbed her collar and jerked her back, pulling her into my arms; perhaps I even tried to kiss her; but she slipped away as easily as she had ever done anything else. Even now I would never be allowed to touch her.

“What will you do?” I called after her. “You can’t leave this London—Clive won’t let you—I won’t let you!”

She stopped just outside the door. “I’m not leaving this London.”

“Then—“

“But I’m not staying with you, either. Hershel’s coming here soon. I’m going to make sure he finds out what’s going on and stops you. Not that I don’t think he can do it on his own.”

“If Clive finds out—“

“Clive won’t find out, because you won’t tell him,” she said coolly.

“Of course I wouldn’t…I couldn’t, but…” She had already turned her back on me. “Claire, wait!”

She looked back. “I’m sorry, Dimitri. Thank you for everything.”

And she was gone.

 


End file.
